


Such Things But Perfect Emptiness

by Syntax



Series: 50k Challenge Oneshots [9]
Category: Hollow Knight (Video Games)
Genre: Character Study, Dehumanization, Experimental Style, Gen, Introspection, No Dialogue, Post-Dream No More Ending (Hollow Knight), Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies, Video Game Mechanics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-12
Updated: 2020-02-12
Packaged: 2021-02-28 01:34:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,291
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22675672
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Syntax/pseuds/Syntax
Summary: Were the Hollow Knight less well-trained in the art of maintaining an empty mind and following orders without a thought for why the order was given, perhaps they might have been confused as to why their unvoided sibling saw fit to lead them out of the Black Egg Temple and direct them to the nearest hot spring so that their wounds could be tended to.They did not understand it.  But then again, they did not need to.  Understanding was not their place.
Relationships: The Hollow Knight | Pure Vessel & Hornet & The Knight
Series: 50k Challenge Oneshots [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1627744
Comments: 11
Kudos: 160





	Such Things But Perfect Emptiness

_Through it's pain we found a truth that must now be confessed,_  
_For nothing can contain such things but perfect emptiness._

_\- Excerpt from Ode to Hallownest by Monomon the Teacher_

Were the Hollow Knight less well-trained in the art of maintaining an empty mind and following orders without a thought for why the order was given, perhaps they might have been confused as to why their unvoided sibling saw fit to lead them out of the Black Egg Temple and direct them to the nearest hot spring so that their wounds could be tended to. They did not look back at the crater which held the remains of their voided sibling as they walked. Vessels were hardy things, born of God and Void. Their sibling would be back.

Their unvoided sibling did not seem to be aware of this fact, however. When the two of them reached the hot spring, she appeared distraught at seeing their voided sibling sitting on a nearby bench as if nothing had ever happened. Their unvoided sibling yelled and cried and wrapped the smaller vessel into her arms tightly.

Their voided sibling looked at the Hollow Knight as their shared sister held them in her arms. Meaningless understanding passed between the two vessels. The Hollow Knight did not know what was going on either.

Then again, they did not need to know. Comprehension was not their place. Merely action and restraint.

Their unvoided sibling bid the Hollow Knight to enter the spring, and they did so. The tattered remains of their cloak were peeled away so that their siblings would have better access to the Hollow Knight's many wounds, clearing away the remaining traces of rotting infection with their own cloaks and claws. The soul infused within the spring water soaked into their broken frame with every passing minute the siblings worked. Though not ordered to, the Hollow Knight focused on their steadily filling well of soul and directed the energy towards healing the wounds their siblings had finished cleaning.

The work was slow going. This was not an issue, however. Every passing moment spent in the hot spring provided the Hollow Knight with more soul with which to heal themself later, and their siblings with more energy to continue working. Eventually their unvoided sibling deemed the work finished for now, and declared to the two vessels that they would be finding a place to sleep for a while before moving on to anything else when they were rested.

The Hollow Knight had no objections. They hardly needed sleep, but their unvoided sibling likely did, and it was not their place to argue anyways.

Their voided sibling perked up at the possibility of shelter, however. They dashed out of the hot spring with a trail of quickly dissipating void following behind, heedless of whether their siblings were keeping up with them.

Their unvoided sibling gave them a look. Unlike with their voided sibling, the Hollow Knight could not sense or pass on any understanding through a shared connection to the void. They merely stared back in blank incomprehension, and their sister led them out of the hot springs with a sigh.

Their voided sibling lead the two of them deeper into this area of Hallownest, taking them to a stag station where the small vessel quickly ran forth and struck the stag bell with their nail. The Hollow Knight did not understand such quick action. Did the smaller vessel have some insight into their other sibling's mind? Were they given orders that the Hollow Knight had not heard?

The stag rushed into view, skidding to a stop just before the station. Their voided sibling pointed to the destination on a station map—a place called Dirtmouth—and the three of them climbed onto the seats on the stag's back. The Hollow Knight was a narrow fit. The top of their horns nearly reached the top of the stagway tunnels, and so they had to hunch their form over for much of the time traveling.

This did not bother the Hollow Knight. They were used to confinement. They were not so used to rough movement, however. When the stag took off through the tunnels, they found themself gripping the seat tightly with their remaining arm and bracing their weakened shell for whatever misery might come their way when the motion stopped.

It seemed to the Hollow Knight that their little group was traveling upward. They couldn't fathom why they would be going down into the caverns to go up via the stagways, but if the choice came from their unvoided sibling directing their voided sibling as they suspected it did, they had little room to complain. The ways of the Pale Beings were to direct and prepare. The ways of the Vessels were to follow and contain. They would concede to their sister's judgement.

The stag came to a much gentler stop when they reached their destination. The Hollow Knight dared not release their grip on the cramped seat until both of their siblings had stepped on to the loading platform.

Some of their wounds felt rawer now than they had before going to the spring. More sore. The Hollow Knight wondered if perhaps the wounds had been torn open by the rough motions of stag travel. Repairing them would mean an unfortunate waste of soul that could have been used for their greater injuries instead if that were the case.

They looked around the unfamiliar stag station. What grand importance did this location have?

Evidently their unvoided sibling was wondering the same thing.

They could hear the demigoddess speaking with their smaller sibling, asking why the vessel had chosen this location in particular, and why they had chosen to take the stagways rather than simply climb. The Hollow Knight turned to look at their siblings as she spoke. Their voided sibling was expectedly unresponsive to their unvoided sibling's words for the most part. The Hollow Knight looked closer.

The smaller vessel was fidgeting under her gaze, just slightly.

They did not understand. They did not understand such movements. They did not understand such a vessel choosing for themself to go somewhere. Taking the initiative to go somewhere. Vessels reacted, not acted. Their purpose was to be empty tools to fit the Radiance inside. Not common bugs with thoughts and fidgets.

The Hollow Knight did not voice this. They couldn't. The Hollow Knight did not think this. They wouldn't. They wondered with an empty, mindless wonder, with no subject and no predicate and no clause, for they were the Hollow Knight and knowing was not their place.

Their siblings started to head out of the stag station and into the town above, and the Hollow Knight followed them without a second's delay.

They did not have any expectations of what Dirtmouth looked like before exiting the stag station. Their smaller siblings went first before the Hollow Knight did, ducking and squirming through the small doorway in order to fit their tall frame and taller horns out of the way. Dirtmouth was a dusty place. Dark. Mournful, maybe. The ground beyond the stag station was dry and crumbling underfoot, and even the air seemed unusually heavy. Perhaps most bugs would avoid a place like this.

The Hollow Knight could understand why the smaller vessel had chosen this town. In some ways, it was similar to their birthplace in the Abyss.

The vessels' sister stepped forward. She looked about the mostly-empty town before them, the muggy sky and the houses with no lights on inside. She spoke critically of Dirtmouth in a way that suggested she was perhaps thinking aloud, noting the distance from Hallownest proper, the defenses and lack thereof, the level of exposure to the elements. It seemed to the Hollow Knight that their unvoided sibling disapproved. They began preparing themself for another trip through the stagways.

Despite the Hollow Knight's expectations though, their sibling deemed Dirtmouth an acceptable location for the time being and asked their smallest sibling how to go about procuring a house. Once more the small vessel ran off, trailing motes of void behind them. Once more the Hollow Knight and their unvoided sibling followed suit.

The Hollow Knight observed the town as they walked. Very few of the buildings looked lived-in. Very few bugs milled about outside of them. A beetle perhaps half of the Hollow Knight's size looked at them with widening eyes before retreating into her home, walking so fast that she nearly knocked over a nearby bug with faint resemblance to a vessel.

The Hollow Knight looked away.

Their voided sibling seemed to have found what it was they were looking for. The smaller vessel stood in front of an aging bug of indeterminate species. Perhaps a burrowing beetle considering the climate and wing covers? They were unsure. Their sibling again showed subtle movement unbecoming of a vessel, bouncing up and down ever so slightly as the old bug talked. It was... Unsettling. Or at least it would be if the Hollow Knight allowed themself to form such opinions.

Their unvoided sibling did not seem to care. She marched purposefully to the old bug and inquired about finding a house. A large one, she amended, glancing back to the Hollow Knight with a marked lack of subtlety. The Hollow Knight wondered why she would want to house them all together. Vessels did not require the same amenities that regular bugs did, and higher beings such as their sister could certainly do better than to share space with failed experiments.

The will of a higher being was not their place to question, however. If their sister desired their proximity then the Hollow Knight would not object.

The old bug pointed out a few buildings at the edge of town that had apparently been community centers of some kind when the town wasn't quite so empty, and their unvoided sibling immediately took her leave to go inspect the buildings in question before the old bug could finish speaking. The Hollow Knight followed just a half-step behind, while their voided sibling paused to wave farewell to the old bug before joining their siblings in their walk.

It was not far to the edge of town. A building perhaps thrice the size of the other houses they'd seen near the stag station stood boarded up and dilapidated before the three siblings, worn and discolored by the elements and backed by steep cliffs. Above the large double doors, a clock hung frozen in time. Their unvoided sibling seemed pleased by the sturdiness of the walls and defensible position. She broke the lock on the door with her nail and headed inside.

Many rooms with varying layers of dust greeted them. Their unvoided sibling put their voided sibling to work finding blankets and bandages and whatever other supplies they could use to rest for the time being, then guided the Hollow Knight into an adjoining room to see how their wounds had dealt with the travel. The Hollow Knight remained motionless as their sister poked and prodded at the various cracks and holes in their carapace. It hurt, but that was no excuse to break decorum.

Their unvoided sibling ordered the Hollow Knight to focus their soul and heal some of the smaller wounds. The Hollow Knight did so. She watched the holes in their carapace shrink somewhat with a keen eye. Then their sister glanced up at the unmended crack in their mask running from one of the Hollow Knight's eyes to perhaps halfway behind their head and visibly soured.

The Hollow Knight did not blame their sibling. The crack ached tremendously.

Their sister ordered them to focus on repairing the crack in their mask. The Hollow Knight could not do so. The mask was a separate part of themself not so easily mended by soul. The only way that it could be repaired was for the mask to break completely and allow the Hollow Knight's shade to reform elsewhere. If their shade even still could reform elsewhere. They were still quite weak from the struggles of the Oldlight ravaging their body.

Not that they could tell their unvoided sibling this without a mouth to cry suffering. She waited and waited and sighed and moved on.

Their voided sibling returned from the dusty depths of the abandoned building, a mess of cloth piled over top of them as they scrambled into the room. The Hollow Knight watched their sister examine the fabric and sort it into two piles based on some unknown quality. The first pile she directed the smaller vessel to fill with pillows and leaves and other soft things to made a bed with so that they could all rest. The second pile she tore into strips and set to winding them about the Hollow Knight's torso as makeshift bandages to better support their ruined carapace.

They did not understand why their sibling bothered going through the trouble, but they did not dissent to the medical care. Their sister guided them all to the bed so that they could rest together, and the two vessels guarded her without complaint until she awoke.

Dirtmouth experienced something on a regular basis that the Hollow Knight had not seen in quite some time.

Time itself.

Their sister had not taken well to seeing the sun rise on Hallownest for the first time in living memory. She screeched. She panicked. Their voided sibling turned to the Hollow Knight in search of a memory of something like this happening before, and the Hollow Knight shared it with them easily. The endless night of Hallownest's stasis had only come after they had been sealed into the Black Egg Temple. With the stasis broken, so had the night.

And, apparently, the perpetually calm weather. The Hollow Knight had forgotten that water could fall from the heavens in places aside from the City of Tears.

Dirtmouth rained after the stasis was broken. It grew foggy and muggy and cold. The residents that had come from outside of Hallownest helped their unvoided sibling adjust to life in a world that did not last eternal, something that she had never experienced. She did not appreciate the myriad minor changes of the new world they found themselves living in. She made it known to her siblings that she did not appreciate it.

The two vessels merely let their sibling be. 

Adjusting to a day/night cycle took no effort for a being that didn't need to sleep. The Hollow Knight had no reason to leave their new home and see how differently the world became in the daylight hours, but their voided sibling seemed endlessly curious about the changes happening all around them. They did not understand it. If the Hollow Knight looked out of the windows in their home, they could see the sun traveling distantly overhead, bright and painful and too much like the Oldlight to bear. They could remember the moth goddess's cries of indignation. They could remember her mantras.

No matter how many times they saw the dawn break over Hallownest, the Hollow Knight could never understand the moth goddess's preoccupation with such a simple event. Even now they did not understand. The sun trailing in the sky was hardly impressive. They wondered if perhaps the Oldlight was speaking metaphorically. The Pale King had done so many times before realizing that his Pure Vessel could not tell the difference between an idle phrase and a genuine order.

The Hollow Knight spent many days resting in their new home, focusing their soul on healing as much of their injuries as possible. When their well of soul had been depleted they sought out their voided sibling for directions to the hot springs. Their first trip back underground quickly revealed why the smaller vessel had lead their siblings to a stag station instead of simply directing them back to the main entrance into Hallownest—attempting to climb up the chain in Dirtmouth's well with only one remaining arm would surely strain the Hollow Knight's injuries far worse than riding the stags could have.

Their sister spent her days alternating between hunting for food, looking for lingering signs of the infection, and attempting to locate survivors among the formerly infected. The last two she did with the two vessels beside her. Seeing the withered remnants of how badly they had failed at containing the infection did little help for the Hollow Knight. They had failed their kingdom. They had failed their purpose. The sacrifices that they and all the other vessels had made were in vain.

But every so often, the siblings found a living bug still wandering around Hallownest. A disoriented miner in the Crystal Peaks. A foreigner wondering why more than half of the fools in the Colosseum had suddenly dropped dead. A few straggling nobles in the City of Tears. The nobles recognized the Hollow Knight. They recognized the Gendered Child. And against all knowledge that the Hollow Knight had for its voided sibling, the nobles even recognized the Kingsbrand emblazoned on the smaller vessel's shell.

That had been. A difficult day. Logically, the Hollow Knight knew that the Pale King had not survived long in Hallownest after it turned out that his Pure Vessel was not quite so pure. The Pale King had made his own sacrifices just as his children had, and the Hollow Knight had little doubt that their father would simply lie down and accept that he had lost the fight against the infection when he could still work himself to death trying to find one last way to save his people. Yes, logically, they knew their father was dead.

That did not mean that they were prepared to face the physical proof of his demise.

Their siblings allowed the Hollow Knight time on their own to mourn, unperturbed by the open show of their own failure at remaining empty, the idea instilled that had destroyed everything they had been created to save. The Hollow Knight tried to find some manner of gratitude or thanks within the void of their being to repay their siblings for their kindness. There was none. Finally, it seemed, they were truly hollow.

Days passed more slowly then. Or perhaps the Hollow Knight only perceived them as such. Their unvoided sibling directed survivors into Dirtmouth for the time being so that they could be easily cared and accounted for while Hallownest began to rebuild. Their voided sibling traveled the width and breadth of the kingdom in search of anyone who could grant aid in such dark times. The small vessel learned the expectations and workload of a king as they traveled from a bug the Hollow Knight recognized as a once-respected courtier from the City of Tears. They had no objections for their sibling's choice of teacher. One could do with worse.

For the Hollow Knight, there was remarkably little to fill the hours with. They healed, and they rested, and they managed their wounds. They had fulfilled their purpose, however poorly, and there was nothing left for them now that the infection was gone for good. They were not a princess or a nailmaster or a courtier who could pick up a new life for themself now that the world was sensible again. They were a vessel that had been emptied and filled and emptied again. They had no purpose in this new world.

Even still, the Hollow Knight stayed in their home in Dirtmouth with their siblings, both of whom had apparently seen fit to keep the flawed vessel around for reasons they could not comprehend. And the Hollow Knight was fine with that. It was not their place to know.

But sometimes, they wondered if it could be.

**Author's Note:**

> i was reading a fic the other day where they got hollow into dirtmouth via the chain in the well, and i was just like... that'd probably be a lot easier if you just used the stag station instead.


End file.
